News, Local history and Thanet issues from Michael's Bookshop in Ramsgate see www.michaelsbookshop.com I publish over 150 books about the history of this area click here to look at them.

Friday, 20 March 2015

The idle foughts of an idle feller.

Frankly I have been a bit depressed since Jeremy Clarkson
got the sack for the punch up because he asked for a UKIP receipt for his
steak. On the local front I guess TDC selling off Staffordshire Street car park
to developers and Transport Select Committee reviewing plans to turn The Isle
of Thanet into one massive airport got me down a bit too.

Now I have to face the facts, there will probably never be
any more Top Gear, all of Thanet will probably become one massive airport – due
to popular local demand – and I am likely to get a UKIP MP who has no interest
in Ramsgate.

On a brighter note today when I went into the new Labour
shop and asked how much to buy a politician, after being told it was too
expensive – I did discover that the intention over Staffordshire Street car
park is for any development there not to reduce the number of parking places,
something like the Sainsbury at WC.

I have been very busy of late, mostly buying book stock for
my bookshop, which after a busier November, December and January (I haven’t
added up Feb yet) is a bit depleted. So ‘pologies for the lack of blog posts
here.

So what have I been up to? I will try to add to this going backwards
in time – if I get time.

Yesterday, having spent most of the morning out doing book
buying house calls I had a late snack lunch at The Minnis

I did remember to get something I could eat easily while
sketching

So here is the sketch.

Next comes the local shop closures, starting I suppose
with No. 13 King Street, which was Tesco’s then Tesco Home and wear and then
Macdonald’s, so are they closing or just cancelling the franchise and carrying on
regardless. What will the closure of Primark do to Margate? I have to say I miss
the BHS café there looking over the sea on a cold winter day. And of course with WC
reaching its ten year anniversary, up come some of the leases there for
renewal. With retail the rent has to reflect the profitability of the site and ultimately
it doesn’t matter where the value of real estate climbs to, retail real estate
is limited by this factor. You know thinking of the UKIP receipt and having
spent most of yesterday lugging about boxes of books on the north side of the
island, it would never occur to me to claim my lunch against expenses. Thinking
back to the main MP expenses scandal locally, with Steve and the big dinners and
Roger and the big TV, well it obviously isn’t over yet.

On the Manston front the government have decided to spend
their £1m on getting Price Waterhouse Coopers to investigate whether TDC should
have engaged in the RiverOak cpo to turn Manston Airport in to an airfreight
hub. I wonder if any money will be
spent on asking what the TDC voters want for Manston.

Of course it was Price Waterhouse Coopers that Infratil
used to dispose of the airport in the first place.

It looks like The Royal Sands development on the
Pleasurama site is back on again and I guess this is the key photo (taken last
summer).This is mostly about sand, the sand that will
hold the Royal Sands in place, the problem being that it is fast washing away.

Flat Eric has found a new book to review, like
so many books now 1p on Amazon – which means £2.81 including postage which
means our price is £2.50. While on the subject of falling book prices, after an
ex library copy of The Ramsgate Millennium Book sold on ebay for about £60
including postage, it looks like the price is going down on this title. Makes you
wonder which of the libraries sold it off, or even if they did. On the Royal Victoria Pavillion front there is a
rumour going around that now the council have agreed to Weatherspoons making it
the largest pub in Europe, they are now dragging their feet over the terms of
the lease so that it will remain derelict for several years.

Of course with the unanswered questions about our future
MPs, the main one for me being what will they do for Ramsgate? With the council
also election wise being in a state of Preparation H the question of Gold
Member or Gold Members arises.

Once again the candidates seem a bit loathe to explain
what they would do for Ramsgate, apart from the air freight hub and getting
Thanet out of Europe, that is. What worries me here is the number of customers I
have who work at Discovery Park or who have a job related to us being members
of the EU.

4 comments:

Say hello to Flat Eric for me. I don't actually get out much anymore so don't speak to people about Ukip and the possibility that Farrage May not actually get to become Thanet South MP, what is the word on the ground?

Flat sends his regards Don. Very mixed views on the election, I would say at local level no councillor feels their seat is safe and there is a general acceptance that TDC will probably become a Tory UKIP coalition. On the MP front I would say it’s still pretty much wide open with a lot of voters who voted either Labour or Conservative last time still considering UKIP. It seems to be moving more towards a fight between UKIP and Labour at the moment, possibly because the Tory candidate is very anti Europe, so if you want to stay in Europe then Labour is the only option. Possibly because of peoples concerns about what they will get in terms of a constituency MP if something goes wrong with there relationship with the government after the elections e.g. if the government stops paying you your pension, disability benefit or whatever, who is the most likely candidate to sort it out for you. So I would say it looks to me as though Labour are pulling ahead a bit.

Meanwhile back at Port Ramsgate according to the Green councillor, TDC have no recorded information of the 5 meetings they held with the company that wants to open concrete block and waste wood processing operations. This is despite TDC being censored for not keepng records of the Transeuropa fiasco. Now were TDC officers under instructions from the elected cabinet to operate in this way? maybe few councillors should be asked this when they come calling for your vote.I just hope the \green councillor keeps up his investigations after the election where he seems to be fighting a lost cause to retain his seat.

I guess Dave that this one is going to run and run, the two people putting the case for the company were previously two very senior TDC planning officers, if they didn’t write the TDC rule book they would certainly know all of the loopholes in it.

I think the nub of the problem is having Port Ramsgate designated as a port when Dover is under capacity and there isn’t really any chance of companies we would want to use it coming here.

I would say it’s leisure use there or more problems, like animal exports and polluting industry that no one else wants.

Please note comments that may be libellous, comments that may be construed as offensive, anonymous derogatory comments about real people, comments baiting internet trolls, comments saying that an anonymous comment was made by a named real person, boring comments and spam comments, comments in CAPs will be deleted. Playground stuff like calling real people by their time stamp or surname alone, referring to groups as gangs, old duffers and so on will result in deletion. Comment that may be construed as offensive to minority groups is not allowed here either, so think before you write it, remember that the internet is a public place, that it is very difficult to be truly anonymous and that everyone who uses it leaves a trail of some sort. Also note the facility to leave anonymous comment will be turned of during periods when I am unable to monitor comment, this will not affect people commenting who are signed on to their blogger accounts. When things are particularly difficult on the commercial spam front I may turn comment moderation on for periods.

If you feel that someone has left a comment that is offensive and directed at you personally please email me (link on the sidebar) asking to have it removed, you will need to tell which post and the date and timestamp of the offending comment. Please do not reply to the offending comment as I will assume you continuing the dialogue as meaning that you want the comments left there.

Here are the links to the pictures of Ramsgate carnival 201 on my camera card http://michaelsbookshop.com/717/id10.htm http://mi...

recent comments

Local history facilities.

Much of the local history I publish is available for free on this blog, in some cases I have linked whole books to blog postings, if you want a printed copy of one of the books I publish click here postage is free to UK addresses.

Alternatively you can of course come to my bookshop in Ramsgate and browse them and about 30,000 secondhand books on other subjects, remember we close Thursdays and Sundays.